They want explanation, not faith; God gives them faith as the explanation. - Geoffrey Wood
We have deficited upon their attention in the most disorderly fashion. - Geoffrey Wood
And so, wish becomes pang; the crave, an ache; pleasure, pain. Losing all its pleasure, anticipation cuts the opposite direction and becomes merely a constant, painful reminder of what they’ve lost, forever. - Geoffrey Wood
They think that if they had more belief they would pray more, so keep them lacking. Never let them realize that the opposite is true: If they prayed more, they would have more belief. - Geoffrey Wood
When some one mortal yet eternal human merely being relying on precisely nothing but the audacious love of his Maker, calls on Him to part the Heavens, well, we are undone. - Geoffrey Wood
With addiction, a client’s fears can be ripened into some very pleasing fruit: Irritability, suspiciousness, isolation, paranoia, and finally on to that grand banana —the fear of Fear itself. - Geoffrey Wood
They prefer a God of an altogether softer flavor. Nothing too extreme. Complaisance, not magnanimity. They do not think upon the God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God. They prefer to think in terms of God liking them. That’s the God they’ve conjured for themselves. - Geoffrey Wood
True Prayer is the work of relationship, where He moves them from mere information about Him to a one-on-one experience with Him, so that now when they talk about knowing God, they mean more than, I understand what you’re saying about God, but also, It fits my experience of Him. - Geoffrey Wood
Life, liberty and the pursuit of gratitude, now that would’ve worked. They would have been readily led to contentment, which would’ve then better lead them on to happiness. - Geoffrey Wood
The more we train a man to labor, deliberate, dictate and demand over the inconsequential, the less capable his mind becomes of holding that of consequence. - Geoffrey Wood
Grace runs downhill and now all his time is being redeemed. - Geoffrey Wood
Press them continually with memory and dream and have them waste their Present there. - Geoffrey Wood
That sense of entitlement is precisely where we want them because the right to happiness is directly opposed to one of The Adversary’s greatest curatives —gratitude. - Geoffrey Wood
It seems The Adversary needs neither their guilt nor their request, but simply their return. In other words, since repentance is the process whereby guilt is turned into gratitude, He doesn’t mind if they skip a step and go directly to gratitude. - Geoffrey Wood
Truth, with a capital T, was swapped for Fact with a capital F, then both lower-cased —facts the new trues. - Geoffrey Wood
And keep them thinking in terms of 'being good' as this is not an end so much as a means to something else —happiness, respect, self-esteem, etc… And whatever their true end is, take it away, and so goes their goodness. - Geoffrey Wood
Courtesy, not control, that was His means. Just as He requested the stars to sing and they leapt into bright being, so request was to be their rule over bird and beast, seas and trees, mountains and moons and all the dancing distances between the heavenlies filled with the unending song of Creation. - Geoffrey Wood
Gratitude, not guilt, as motivation is always His starting point, thus guilt as a motivation leads nowhere. - Geoffrey Wood
In Joy, to lose one’s life is to gain it, and Joy never loses an opportunity to be lost in the other. - Geoffrey Wood
In general, Americans would walk a mile uphill in the rain to avoid pain, unless the walk could be shorter and level and the day sunny, which they’d prefer. - Geoffrey Wood
They think that if they were allowed to do anything they desired, they would be satisfied and the more desires the better. But all desires divorced from The Desire eventually collapse in on themselves. - Geoffrey Wood
Faith is an act whereby they learn their God. - Geoffrey Wood
They really do occupy a scrumptious little dark corner of my heart! - Geoffrey Wood
Joy is that paradox where a man so trusts, is so enraptured, as to be caught up and lost in the other, while at the same time, being utterly known by the other, thus utterly himself. - Geoffrey Wood
Finally, slowly, drippingly, degrade the term Choice down to its most meager means: The red car not the black one. The 9:25 showing, not the 7:15. Ritz not Wheat Thins. - Geoffrey Wood
And recently, we installed another word in its place which, to their minds, has a wholly positive connotation. We say ‘Gluttony’. They say ‘Consumerism’. - Geoffrey Wood
Their guilt plus their repentance should have equalled forgiveness. But they don’t feel forgiven, so they failed, which makes them feel guilty, which was why they repented in the first place, so they’re stuck right where they started: Guilty. - Geoffrey Wood
Selling a new lie is easy, but not so with un-teaching an old truth. - Geoffrey Wood
Where faith costs nothing, faith loses respect, even to those who possess it. - Geoffrey Wood
I say illusion of choice because, in many cases, the nature of their choices hardly reaches the level of will, but of merely perfunctory activity. For the most part, their desires are not too strong, they are too weak, apathetic and easily placated. They often can be tempted into doing Nothing. - Geoffrey Wood
Faith is where they learn about their God; but Prayer is where they explore Him. - Geoffrey Wood
Never let them try out this gratitude, for they would immediately discover that it supplies the first and most important component to happiness: Contentment. - Geoffrey Wood
Now they feel not only known and still loved, but also loved because they are known. - Geoffrey Wood
Chant to him: An individual thinks for himself. Then roll that around in his head till it means: If I didn’t think of it, it has no bearing on my life. - Geoffrey Wood
Turning an experience about to observe it, results in a lessening of the experience directly proportional to the amount of observation. To think about it is, to some degree, to stop the pleasure, to stop the experience, to step outside it. - Geoffrey Wood
Though I despise it, I do not doubt His Love for the creatures. I have seen it —His ever-reaching outward for any hand that might reach back. At His love, I tremble yet believe. - Geoffrey Wood
I shouldn’t need to remind you that it was words that created the universe and The Word that now holds it together. While your man was simply reading one little book, something not unlike Genesis was stirring in his skull, and you didn’t think to stop it? - Geoffrey Wood
Indeed, if their wristbands asked them the question: What-Would-Jesus-Buy—well now, that could very well revolutionize the Christian church in America. - Geoffrey Wood
The eye is to light as the soul is to God. - Geoffrey Wood
If we must tempt to Pleasure, how do we tempt to the least amount of Pleasure? Or better yet, tempt them to its opposite? But how to tempt them to pain. - Geoffrey Wood
Somehow they fail to see that for someone aggravated by depression, self-help will be useless, indeed, it is precisely the self that needs to be forgotten. - Geoffrey Wood
I don’t even like the phrase ‘opportunity to sin’ because it implies the opportunity to obey. - Geoffrey Wood
With Truth, Reason, and Morality off the board, we then capture their last Rook —that prissy little virtue, Temperance— for she depends on those other three for her beauty and was thus left wholly undefended. - Geoffrey Wood
Properly understood, Imagination and Prayer are directly proportional —the more they pray beyond their bounds, they expand their vision beyond their resources, their experiences, their expectations. - Geoffrey Wood
If we blind them to The Adversary —decrease their desire for The Desire— while at the same time encourage them to do anything else they desire with increasing freedom of choice, then eventually we snuff out desire while leaving demand in tact. - Geoffrey Wood
Denial makes it easier to keep an addiction progressing smoothly along and, being a lie, it’s just better form. - Geoffrey Wood
As a rule, Americans are big on that word choice and some souls can be captured simply by dangling before the creature a continual, lifelong supply of things from which to choose. - Geoffrey Wood
Still, despite all our noise, this universe hinges on a melody, that’s the dismal truth of it. Oh, we can propagandize all we wish, it doesn’t change the fabric of things. This universe was not made for the fallen, only the redeemed. - Geoffrey Wood
When their minds mingle with His magnanimity, something of eternity rubs off on their imaginations. - Geoffrey Wood
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happy hour, the long weekend, the all-inclusive island resort, the sunny beach vacation. Happiness is somewhere else, someplace with boat drinks, some secret, distant state of bliss which if they were given would bore them in minutes. - Geoffrey Wood
They forget that for a Creator to create, He must be greater than His creation, thus He must be by definition not less than emotional. - Geoffrey Wood
There is a mathematics to all his relationships, underlying each and every one. He wants it to all add up in his head and he wants to do the adding. And should someone step outside his ciphers, the circle his mind has drawn, his trust evaporates. - Geoffrey Wood
Why not have a God in your back pocket for when you need Him? That’s all most of them mean by 'Christian. - Geoffrey Wood
The Bible is the one book we’ve most succeeded in having them never read as a book. Keep it that way. - Geoffrey Wood
When sex was something godlike, Lust was the profane curiosity that killed many a straying cat. Now, having removed mystery, Lust is less a long-standing, overpowering yearning, more a sudden craving of the appetite. Less quest, more impulse buy. - Geoffrey Wood
Also, always encourage 'being good' over 'doing good.' Acts of goodness are the difficulty for us and should, of course, be avoided. 'Being good' is far less problematic, largely because it lacks definition and can be solely a state of mind completely unattached to reality. - Geoffrey Wood
The Adversary, of course, simply wants them to lay down their sins, guilt and all, and follow Him. But this type holds on to their sinfulness and their guilt for it, because otherwise, they’d have no relationship with Him at all. And, of course, no relationship can be based on guilt and survive. - Geoffrey Wood